Bitter Remedy: An Alec Blume Case Read online

  He patted his stomach, and turned his insubstantial flank towards Blume. ‘Go on. Guess.’

  ‘Forty-six.’

  A look of shock followed by rage passed across Niki’s face, which he managed to twist into a tight smile.

  ‘You must have looked that up.’

  ‘Just a lucky guess.’

  ‘People don’t guess with such precise numbers. Usually you say 30–35, something like that. You don’t just come out with a fixed number.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You looked it up.’

  ‘Where, when, and, also, why the fuck would I bother doing that?’

  ‘Because you’re a policeman, pretending not to be one.’

  ‘Listen, Niki-with-a-K.’

  ‘Stop saying that.’

  ‘I could call you Nicola. Is that your proper name?’

  ‘On my birth certificate only. My mother named me after San Nicola of Bari. My father renamed me Niki in 1976, after Niki Lauda.’

  ‘Either way, you’re a saint or hero. Is that where you’re from: Bari?’

  Niki sat down, and stroked his throat with forefinger and thumb, then gently patted his own cheek. ‘Did you know that men have better skin than women? Women over a certain age envy men their skin. They don’t like to talk about it, of course.’

  ‘Answer my question, Niki-with-a-K.’

  ‘Minchia, you’re a real cop, Cop, aren’t you? I’m from Molfetta originally. A long time ago. There, satisfied?’

  Blume shrugged.

  Niki picked up his shoulder satchel, opened the flap, extracted a thin metal disc, and opened it.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking drugs but –’ He dipped in two fingers and scooped out some white cream, ‘Moisturizer. Men should not be afraid to use cosmetics where necessary. I had my eyes lasered, my teeth whitened. These are things you could do for yourself. Along with losing some weight, maybe. Women find me attractive. Women of my age find me pretty irresistible. We men, we can just keep going, can’t we? We don’t have to limit ourselves. They say Picasso fucked on his deathbed.’

  ‘Silvana?’ Blume could still not quite believe it.

  ‘What about her? She’s my fidanzata, but she recognizes my needs and rights. No man in my line of business could do otherwise, but you don’t know about my line of business, or do you? Is that why you’re here?’

  Blume gazed at Niki’s patent leather shoes, and wondered idly if they ever needed polishing, or if they were even leather to begin with. They looked plastic, and weak. He pictured himself stamping on Niki’s toes. ‘I know you run a discotheque, girls, probably drugs. I know you’re from Bari. Anything else I should know, apart from why you are sitting here in my room right now?’

  ‘I have interests in some organic vineyards. All told, 80 people or so depend on me for their employment.’

  ‘Good for you. Italy needs as many restaurants and discotheques as it can get,’ said Blume.

  ‘And a tattoo studio. They did this one.’ He unbuttoned his shirt exposing smooth hairless tanned skin and more of the tattoo, which turned out to be some sort of stylized Celtic beast.

  ‘I don’t need to see,’ said Blume.

  ‘Body art makes you uncomfortable?’ He made his pectorals ripple.

  ‘You’re sweating, Niki.’

  ‘Not a problem.’ He slipped out a handkerchief and dried his chest. ‘Just makes it glisten all the more.’

  ‘Silvana is considerably younger than you,’ said Blume.

  ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

  ‘No, I guess not. It’s all perfectly balanced. She’s younger than you, you’re shorter than her.’

  Niki’s narrowed his eyes and lifted his lip in what was presumably an attempt at a sneer. He stood up and advanced a few paces towards Blume.

  ‘Coming closer doesn’t make you seem any bigger,’ said Blume. ‘My brain worked out the trick of perspective a long time ago. Also, that thing with the lip? Makes you look like a jackrabbit.’

  When Niki finally spoke, it was in excessively modulated tones, as if he was trying to use his own voice to calming effect.

  ‘My discotheque has live dancing girls. Short skirts. Often they don’t have anything on below. Are you interested?’

  Blume stared at his feet. His toenails needed a trim. ‘Do I look like a disco-dancing type to you?’

  ‘For the girls. They dance, you watch. They like strong men. You’re a fat old stronzo, but you’re strong.’

  ‘You’re telling me, a policeman, you run a prostitute ring?’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you? Most of those girls pay me to come in and dance. They get up there on stage, get themselves seen, get to choose from the men. They want a man with money. There are others. Young, Romanian. A Russian with tits out to here?’ He mimed cupping two breasts some distance away from his own thin chest, and made a thrusting movement with his pelvis.

  ‘Go sit down,’ said Blume. ‘And stop trying to provoke me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t talk to me like that. You think I don’t have policemen in my clubs? Magistrates, too, and judges. They come from all over. Rieti, Terni, Pescara, Teramo, even Frosinone.’

  ‘Addirittura Frosinone. Well, colour me impressed. You still haven’t sat down, but that’s OK, because you’re leaving.’

  Niki went back to the chair and stood behind it. ‘Did someone call you? As a policeman, I mean. Are you here for some purpose?’

  ‘Would it bother you if I were?’ said Blume, grunting as he pulled on a pair of socks.

  ‘Typical cop answer. You’re like . . . I don’t know, priests or politicians. Never a straight answer.’

  ‘Whereas the criminal class are such candid souls.’

  ‘At least criminals say nothing. You guys, always another question, then another. I’m trying to do a good thing here, but I need to know: did someone call you to come here?’

  ‘No. Nobody called me here. As is now perfectly plain to the entire province, I am a policeman. I am not retired, I am on leave. I am not a private detective, and I do not work on my own or on behalf of criminals. Or even on behalf of private citizens. Polizia di Stato. Of the State. Not of private individuals.’

  ‘Good. I believe you. Also because I have been checking you out. Like I said, I have a few contacts.’

  Blume bent down, waited for the light-headedness this caused to abate, then tied his shoelaces. ‘Niki, I could not give a fuck whether you believe me or not.’ From the corner of his eye, he could see Niki lift his hands from the back of the chair and glance at them with distaste. Out came the bottle of disinfectant. Blume gave him time to finish rubbing the glistening substance into his hands. ‘And they say you can’t polish a turd.’

  ‘Ma che vuoi che faccia. A disease-ridden policeman and God knows what else,’ said Niki. ‘So you’re going back to Rome?’

  ‘Are you anxious that I do?’

  From his bag Niki pulled out a plastic bottle with a bright pink liquid in it. ‘One of Silvana’s concoctions. She’s very good at them.’ He sipped at it, then put it carefully away. ‘Are you any good at working on your own, Blume? From what I hear, you’re not so great at working with others, but it’s not quite the same thing.’

  ‘You heard this from?’

  ‘I told you. Some contacts. I called in one or two minor favours. I simply asked a policeman and a magistrate to be a little indiscreet about you, in exchange for which I agreed not to be indiscreet about them.’

  ‘Can I have the name of these two paragons of the law?’

  ‘Maybe later? After you’ve helped me.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘A girl has gone missing.’

  ‘Yes. I have already picked up this news. Small town. Now when you say girl, you mean a woman. One of your dancers.’

  Niki nodded. ‘Alina.’

  ‘So you are asking me to track down one of your missing whores? To act as the pimp’s pimp.’

  ‘I am not a pimp an
d she is not a whore. She’s a friend.’

  ‘A special friend, I imagine. And you reported her disappearance to the appropriate authorities?’

  ‘I did. The local Carabinieri. One of them frequents my clubs, the other does not, but it made no difference. I am not a relative, and the person missing is an adult, and therefore can’t be reported missing. But she is.’

  ‘What about your magistrate friends?’

  ‘What about them? They don’t have jurisdiction for this area, and even if they did, they would never expose themselves by opening an investigation into the club where they go when they tell their wives – anyhow, she can’t be reported missing.’

  ‘So you think I am just the person to track her down, like a private detective?’

  ‘I can pay you very well,’ said Niki, patting his satchel, as if preparing to pull out banknotes there and then.

  ‘Right,’ said Blume. ‘I was waiting for this bit.’

  ‘Of course you were. Everyone needs money.’

  ‘Not me. I have more than I know what to do with. An inheritance.’

  ‘And you’re still a cop? What’s the sense of that?’

  ‘It’s what I do. When I think of something else, I’ll do that.’

  ‘I hear you’re good.’

  ‘Flattery. You know what this is, of course, Niki-with-a-K. It’s a badly played hand. First, you’re worried that I have been sent here to spy into some of what I can assume are your many creepy activities, then you come up with this missing girl thing. No doubt one of your dancers has gone missing: who wouldn’t run from a job like that and a person like you? But you don’t want me to look for her. You’re trying to buy me off with a false mission. Have me take money, look in a different direction. Maybe get me into your club with a few girls, give me money, fuck my credibility and reputation, stop me from looking too closely at something else about you. Isn’t that it? What are you hiding, Niki? Because, you see, a few minutes ago I didn’t give a damn, and now I would sort of like to harm you.’

  ‘You can try. I do nothing bad now,’ said Niki. ‘Taxes, maybe not all declared, not fully compliant with health and safety, I turn a blind eye to some stuff, pay a few people. Yes, drugs do get consumed on my premises; no, I do not sell them. Yes, I have been investigated in the past for this. No, not convicted.’

  ‘Not to worry, Niki. I am on holiday,’ said Blume. ‘See?’ He waved an arm around the room. ‘This is me, on holiday, unwinding. I won’t be staying. So you can take your little self, your man bag, and all your small-minded criminal fears and fuck off out of this room, and leave me in peace!’

  Blume surprised himself by shouting the last word. He never roared like that. He had had no idea he was losing his cool until he did.

  Niki clutched at his bag as if to save it from a gust of wind, and retreated to the door. ‘You need different pills, Blume.’

  Blume was over at the door in two strides. ‘E sparisci, stronzetto,’ said Blume, swatting the door closed.

  Niki’s muffled voice said something, and Blume, again surprising himself with his own rage, yanked open the door. ‘What did you say?’

  Niki leapt back. ‘I said Alina. Her name is Alina. She does exist.’

  Chapter 9

  Alina, too, was learning. Scarcely had she even registered the shock of being taken from Nadia’s company to be brought to another club when, after two days in which no one even spoke to her or asked her to do anything, she was shipped onwards to a different quarter of the city.

  Her new owners liked to have her on the street. They communicated to her through an intermediary hardly any older than her, who was always dressed in yellow and red, the colours of Galatasaray, and was something of a linguist. In passable Romanian, he explained to her that the Scimitar Niteclub, where her bosses worked and behind which she was accommodated in a half-finished building with cement floors, was like a stake in the ground to which she was tied by an invisible chain. ‘Like a dog in garden, yes. You are a dog. A bitch in heat.’

  The young man found the simile very amusing, though he must have used it before. He threw back his head and opened his mouth in mirth, displaying a row of rotting back teeth. He explained that she was expected to wander within a certain radius of 1 kilometre, but no farther. She was to bring clients back to the hostel two doors from the club, and book them into room 17. The client had to pay the 55 Turkish Liras for the room, and she was expected to use it at least three times a day. On no account was she to leave the district.

  She was hardly ever left on her own. A silky, sulky Belarusian blonde went everywhere with her, until one of them was picked up. They were under instructions not to agree to threesomes. Sometimes, Alina was followed by an older dark-skinned woman whose name and nationality simply did not interest her.

  Gradually, her geographical scope was extended, and the streets around the Scimitar became as familiar as the back of her hand. Being out on the streets had improved her Turkish, too. She was building up a mental map of the city, and she would have been capable of explaining to a taxi driver where she wanted to go. But taxi drivers wanted money, and while it was easy enough to get a few extra liras from clients, it was impossible to hide it anywhere. Every nook and cranny of the rooms and every part of her anatomy was subject to frequent and brutal searches day after day. One girl, who had saved quite a stash and managed to keep it hidden in a plastic bag secured by a string attached to the inside of the overflow slit on the bathroom washbasin, had had her face literally kicked in. For weeks, her face, which had been pretty and plump and gave her a well-fed and satisfied look that made many of the others dislike her, was such a mass of bruising and purple that it was impossible to say what sex she was. When the swelling went down, her face had caved in. Her cheeks now formed concave hollows and her nose had been pushed back. Her eyes lost their colour, and her lips were thin and bluish. She stopped eating, walked with a limp, and held her ribs all the time. In two months she aged 20 years. Then she disappeared.

  It was a wet evening in November, the air heavy with diesel fumes and salt, when Alina found her tree. It grew on a traffic island on which she happened to find herself momentarily trapped. The road was less busy than usual, and so the cars heading towards the port were fast and the surface was slick with recent rain. Her Belarusian companion had teetered up the middle of the road, then made a hobbling high-heeled dash to the other side. Alina remained on the central divider, which was wide enough for the council to have turned it into a triangle of urban park with crab grass and a bench no one in their right mind would ever want to sit on. In the middle was a dying tree with a grey trunk that looked like it was made of cement. The traffic did not let up. Alina, bored by waiting, looked down at her golden sandals and painted toenails, and glanced at the tree. At about knee height, the smooth grey of the trunk seemed to fold over itself, like a flap of skin over a healing cut. As three heavy trucks went thundering by nose to bumper, she let her hand absently stroke the slight bulge in the bark. Her small hand found a fissure behind. Interested now, she pushed her fingers in the gap, accidentally trapping her hand for a few seconds, then with another twist, she found she could get her whole hand and wrist inside. The wood inside was bone dry. She pulled her hand out of the cavity, and almost immediately lost sight of the fissure. The traffic relented, and she skipped across the road. Her Belarusian companion was walking down the pavement towards her, muttering something obscene in Russian, the language of persecution.

  Two days passed before Alina put her first money into her hidden hollow. She simply balled up 30 Turkish liras and shoved them in on the off-chance, expecting them to drop as if down a shaft into the ground. It rained solidly for three days after that, and when she came back the grey bark was slick and smooth like sealskin. But her hand quickly found the money, and it was dry. The next time she visited, it was with 50 euros, for which she had had to do something that had made her retch. This time, she brought a small plastic bag of the type they used to put hashish
in. She took out the liras and put them and the euros into the bag, and the bag into the cavity. On both sides of her, the traffic flowed obliviously by.

  For a while, every time she got some extra cash, she would plant it in her tree. It was only after she had received a brutal and wordless throttling, which left her gasping for air on the floor, that she realized she was making a dangerous mistake in never having been discovered holding back cash. Trying to hold onto money was brutally punished, but never even trying was a cause of suspicion. If she became the only one never caught with some illicit money, they might start following her, or simply torture the truth from her. From then on, she was careful to let them occasionally discover a few notes hidden here and there, for which she would give weak and unconvincing explanations and receive casual, unconvinced slaps, though what really hurt was that she was depriving her tree of riches. She took up some petty thieving whenever she could, swiping tips from tables, dropping her hand into jacket pockets. Sometimes she got caught, but the important thing was to mix defiance and suffer punishment in a way that made them think they were getting everything from her.

  She still wanted to get to Italy. The academy might not exist and the job offer had been a sham, of course, but Italy did exist, and Milan was full of hair salons. She would find Nadia. Together they would leave for Italy as free women. They would arrive poor, but tough and ready. They would be entrepreneurs. Alina knew exactly how much was in the tree, but remained hazy about how much they would need to get away, vanish into Italy, and set up an apartment. She reckoned 6,000 euros ought to do it. After six months she had secreted 615 liras and 350 euros in the tree.

  Eighteen months later, Alina had learned quite a lot of Turkish, Russian, a lot of English, and a bit of German. No request or insult was ever completely unexpected. Slaps, punches, and kicks still hurt, but they no longer held the power to shock. She had learned that looks, age, voice, tone, education, physical strength, apparent shyness, or bluster were not reliable guides to how a customer would turn out. People with baby faces did terrible things. People with hard faces, criminal tattoos, metal studs, hairy bellies, bald heads, and little dicks also did evil things. The ones who looked like they wanted to hurt you always did; the ones who didn’t look like it, often would. Her cache was now €2,100.